Manny being Manny?

From AP: Boston slugger Manny Ramirez says “who cares?” if the Red Sox don’t get to the World Series. “It’s not like it’s the end of the world.” But he also says “Why should we panic?” because “we’ve got a great team.”

Here’s the best story I’ve read so far, written by Dave Sheinin of the Washington Post.Â Here’s a snippet:

“Why should we panic?” Ramirez said. ” . . . We’re just going to go play the game, and move on. If it doesn’t happen, so who cares? There’s always next year. It’s not like the end of the world or something.”

Depending upon one’s interpretation, Ramirez’s comments represent either a refreshingly candid, nihilistic view of something — a mere game, after all — to which people attach far too much significance, or the blissfully ignorant rantings of a man-child who simply can’t appreciate the notion that some people do, in fact, care about the outcome.

In other words, Manny being Manny? Or Manny being Nietzsche?

Is Manny correct in seeing the baseball playoffs in their proper perspective? It’s just a game, after all.Â Or is he disrespecting all those fans who put their heart and soul into rooting for their team?

20 Responses

Baseball – Watching grown men hit a ball with a stick for three hours, I can only look at this as “The Great American Waste Time”. It is little more than golf, with watery over-priced, rip-off beer. I have to suspect the intellect of anyone who can be entertained by any of it.

Manny is correct, though I don’t think he should voice it. It is after all just a game and life will go on if the Red Sox lose. Since the fans in essence pay his salary, it’s not smart to say those things. It appears to the fans as though he doesn’t care.

guns and moronic sports figures……this is what we’re obsessed with in this country….someone needs to tell me why…..I make under $100,000 a year…and if I said to my boss “who cares if we meet that deadline”….I would expect to be out on my ass

Mike, the difference is Manny is in the entertainment business, so it’s a win-win situation for him. He’s entertaining to some people being a goof-ball, so he’s good for business…which is a fantasy world. The rest of us would get fired in the real world.

What made me sick was that he showed he doesn’t care who wins by his display after hitting his homer on Tuesday. How can you throw your hands up in a cheer and stand at the plate watching the ball clear the fence when your team is still down by 4 runs? Is he playing for his own Fantasy Baseball Team or for the Red Sox? If a player can be pulled from a game for not hustling out a grounder so should they be pulled for such a bush league stunt like pretending you won the game by hitting a solo six-run homer.

iknowtruthismine…. you must have the same intellect as the rest of us since you took the time and intrest to read the article and comment on it!! As for Many…who does care?? Nobody, why?? cause your the red sox!!!

iknowtruthismine…I can only guess that you played no sports in school and now have trouble relating to others. Sports is great for quality of life and bonding with other humans. You depress the heck out of me. I can picture you surfing the net all night in your mom’s basement.

jakester, just to clarify, I was away from the computer all day and I was NOT the “Mike” who posted in #5. I and only I am the Mike from CapCon. someone appropriated my handle and I don’t agree with him. I am a baseball fan and a Yankee fan. I am quite aware that sports in America is entertainment and it’s all about money and the fans don’t mean diddlysquat. Everything is for the networks and the sponsors, including inhumanly late starting times for World Series games. Unfortunately, all those geniuses in suits are killing professional sports in the long run. Small wonder most kids prefer to play soccer, a game which lacks the popularity among adults to become commercialized—and therefore spoiled—in this country.

As far as Manny Dreadlocks is concerned, he is at best a mediocre fielder and a selfish, egocentric showboat. I totally agree with #7 and I really hope the next time he comes up he is drilled on the first Cleveland pitch. Back in my youth, no one ever dared show up a pitcher after hitting a home run unless they wanted to be beaned. Boston sux and Manny is a perfect fit for them

Amy – One does not have to read an article about baseball to know it is about baseball.

Ski Bum – There is a huge difference between playing sports and sitting on your butt drinking fraudulent, crime against nature beer for three hours watching someone else do it. I played sports in High School and enjoyed it very much for a plausable reason that my one season of baseball did not provide ……….CHEERLEADERS.

iknowtruthismine has posted on many blogs. He / she does not seem to be a happy camper. Iknow… knows the truth and the rest of us are wrong. I picture him / her to be a Nietzschean or nihilist wanna be.

Iknow… is opinionated. I am too. But I sense a dark cloud here. Lighten up! Life is short. Cast off those chains. Get a girl / boy friend. Get some friends. Enjoy an Italian or other ethnic dinner. Drink some beer (which you seem to despise) and get a little buzz. Eat, drink and be merry with some friends. Iknow… sounds so self-centered. So sure that he / she is the real Nietzschean SuperMan / Woman.

Lighten up. Don’t take this the wrong way. I’d just like to see ya at peace with yourself and the world (despite the garbage). I understand where you are coming from. But! If you let it get to you (and it has), then it will destroy ya.

Malatesta – As to my happiness, I’m glad you are so concerned, but as a student of the human condition, “smile and be happy” is not going to change things. I am seeing my fellow humans becoming functions of the market, as opposed to independant beings capable of independant thought. We are becoming what the advertisers are determining to be the norm. There are some blatant frauds that have been pushed on us that have to be addressed. You have mentioned beer.
Because I love beer (in moderation), I feel that the very term is under attack as we buy into the notion that the watery swill served up to us by the so called brewers, is actually something that we are supposed to be proud enough to call beer. Our normal beer is a joke that the rest of the world has been getting for decades and now we are sold “light” beer, which we buy up in great amounts because we have been conditioned to believe that this cheaper to make, weak flavored swill, that we have to drink more of to achieve the desired effect, is some how cool as we gleefully spend more to get less. Light beer is the definition of the term fraud and it is little wonder that advertizing is skewed to encourage the masses to be sucked in by it. I dare say that people who willfully buy light beer, Wonder Bread or Pop-Tarts, are not to be trusted to think in a rational manner and their right to vote for those who are supposed to lead us, should be examined critically.

Thomas Jefferson envisioned a nation of informed, educated citizens who through the democratic principles in a free republic, would make decisions in the voting booth that would protect freedom (if you over-look his slaves) and lead to the rule of Humanity for the benefit of Humanity. Instead we have a nation of totally distracted people who are led by their raw emotions as they walk into a voting booth (if they bother to vote at all) with little knowledge of who their representatives are and what they stand for. Yet, somehow they have minute knowledge of statistics about silly games as they sit and watch the many variations of grown men hit a ball with a stick.

We are pitiful excuses for what we can and must become in order to protect what our forefathers envisioned and until we start turning away from the so-called “entertainments” that are provided to us and face the ever increasing complex problems looming in our face world-wide. If I must lighten up to make you happy, then you are to be disappointed, for it is your duty to get serious and take your head out of the sand.

Iknow…! I am a serious person. Too serious at one time in my life. I forgot what it was like to be happy and have fun. Now I drink Bud Light and enjoy it, socialize with my friends and former work colleagues at the local pubs, listen to my friend’s band when they play at the local gin mills, and make a fool of myself by doing ’70s style splits on the dance floor. If it is my duty to become too serious again, then I am going to disappoint you by becoming a conscientious objector to your nihilistic philosophy of life.
Stay just as you are. Why? Because you are the person I almost became decades ago. You remind me of how happy I am by not becoming the person you are today.
Have a Happy day! If you can.

Malatesta – I wonder if those who ignored the deterioration of Roman society were as happy with the distractions of the Circus Maximus, when everything came tumbling down? They were probably too happy to notice how they were being deceived and used. Lets hope you are serious enough to not let another regime, like the current one, continue the rape of our society come 2008. I think most will take the hedonistic view and focus on their own “happiness”. As a “happy” light beer consumer, you should be ready for the latest product to hit the market, “I Can’t Believe It’s Not I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”. If you can swallow light beer, you can swallow anything.

I can’t swallow your nihilistic philosophy of life. I realize that you have the mindset of a social savior. That is, listen and follow me because I know the truth. The truth will set you free from hedonistic society. I know what you mean. I am not in (too much) disagreement with you. But I don’t set myself up as the all-knowingtruthismineanditcanbeyourstoo. There is a certain moroseness… about ya. This should make you happy:

And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Man is the cruelest animal.
Friedrich Nietzsche

No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The overman…Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become creative. Aware of life’s terrors, he affirms life without resentment.
Friedrich Nietzsche

To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, Foreword

Quotes from your hero. Glad I could help. You must be in heaven right now. Oops! I forgot. You don’t like religion either. What the h*** do ya like except hearing / reading about how much truth you possess and the rest of us live on lies.

Malatesta – The name I chose was what I thought would sucker in the religious boneheads in chat. Chat got old, but I kept the name because it could still get some people’s dander up, usually people who value religion as little as I do, which allowed me to do a few “gotchyas”. My social life is independant of my ruminations in a place like this, as would be necessary if I were to have any kind of life elsewhere. I get along with ALL my neighbors and none of them know I am a committed heathen, although I have tried to stear some of them away from swill beer by giving them some of my bitter dark home brew.

You could be my next door neighbor and not even know it. I enjoy the company of other people and miss the female contact once shared with my late wife. I’m no longer pretty enough to attract the type of women I am attracted too, but with advancing age, you may reach that point too. On here, I can be a crumudgen and enjoy the perks of such a position, anonymously. I can tilt at windmills to my hearts content and maybe, just maybe get some schlub to look at the world from a different angle. I couldn’t live with myself if I accepted the statis-quo, the statis-quo is going to finish us all off eventually.

If we are to survive as a species, we must get some eggs into other baskets. With the pressures of so many of us on the planet, we may just miss our chance, as we alocate all our resources to keeping teeming masses fed. When some final disaster occurs, natural or man-made, I hope that there are some of us who will look back at a decimated Earth, turn around and head out into the stars. Sit back, open a Coors Light, slap a buddy on the back and be glad there are some of us out here worried about the future of Humanity.

OK Manny! Now that the Red Sox are in the World Series: “Who cares. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.” What goes around comes around Manny. But careful of what you say because it might sneak up and bite you (metaphorically speaking of course).